Many forms of mobile payments are available to consumers today. While traditional methods such as cash and credit cards remain popular, many consumers also use new forms of payment made available via electronic computing devices. For example, many devices contain near-field communication (“NFC”) capability, which allows a payment to be initiated when the device is placed into close proximity with an NFC reader. The payment terminal obtains payment account information through the NFC reader and then communicates with an appropriate financial network or other back-end processing system to authorize the transaction.
Payment tokens are typically used to secure data processed by mobile devices equipped with NFC technology when conducting payment transactions with contactless payment cards, contactless payment terminals, and/or other NFC equipped cell phones. Beyond the underlying account number, merchants also typically consider the account provider (e.g., bank, credit card issuer, etc.) and payment network (e.g., VISA®, MasterCard®, etc.) indicated by the payment token when considering whether to authorize a transaction. But existing methods and devices for employing payment tokens typically require network connectivity to provision payment tokens with that information on the payment devices, and many types of payment devices do not provide the ability to receive data, including provisioning data.
Thus, payment tokens that are not generated for a specific customer and/or financial institution—such as pre-provisioned payment tokens included on payment devices produced by third-parties unaffiliated with a particular financial institution—do not identify the account provider and payment network. This is because this information will not become known until a user purchases the payment token (or payment device storing the payment token, as the case may be) and identifies a financial account to be associated with the payment token (e.g., when a user registers a payment device and payment token for use).
Accordingly, certain aspects of the disclosed embodiments provide methods and systems that enable parties to use any pre-provisioned payment tokens during a transaction to identify, in addition to a funding account number for processing a payment transaction, the account provider and payment network associated with the funding account number. Other aspects are also provided as disclosed below.